The Last Customer

For nearly a century Manhattan's Duveen Brothers Inc. built the most distinguished name in art dealing. Founded in 1877 by an English antique dealer, the commercial gallery was carried to the pinnacle of poshery by his son, Baron Duveen of Millbank, who became so legendary a dealer that 24 years after his death in 1939, a hit Broadway play, Lord Pengo, made fiction of his exploits. He bought and sold Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer three times, always handled, as his motto affirmed, "nothing but recognized masterpieces." His clients were equally well recognized --Mellon, Morgan, Frick, Rockefeller, Kress, Altman, Bache--and Duveen steered their taste in building superb, now mostly public collections.

Last week another big customer came along. He turned out to be the last. For more than $15 million, Norton Simon, 57, Southern California entrepreneur and art collector (TIME, April 24), bought the gallery's elegant Manhattan mansion and everything in it. The wares include 146 paintings dating from the early Renaissance through the 18th century. There are tapestries ranging from the French Gothic to Francois Boucher's rose damask Gobelins commissioned by Louis XVI, an abundance of porcelains, sculpture, antique furniture, and a rare 4,000-book art library. None of the treasures will go under the hammer or into Norton Simon's private collection. Instead, Simon's separate nonprofit educational foundation plans to lend or give works to worthy U.S. museums, most notably the soon to be completed Los Angeles County Museum.

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